Man, Serato justifies some idiotic purchases. Like this one for example. Do I have long hair (or for that matter, any hair at all? As I am rapidly balding?) Is it 1989, and I am in Jew Nersey working on my Thunderbird? Do I stuff nerds into lockers because I live in Wisconsin? Actually, I guess if I TRULY were into Skid Row, I would live on skid row. None of these things are true! It's only bc I like "I Remember You" and agree with the sentiments of "18 And Life" and "Youth Gone Wild" that I thought I should buy this CD, so as to have those songs in my computer at C.Q.S (CD Quality, Son). Total number of times, in my life, that I have voluntarily listened to/played any of those songs: zero.BEST SONG: I REMEMBER YOU

SEXY BEAST OST

LOL, myself. This CD is an import, meaning it must have cost me like $25! Guh! This is hilarious that I have this. Why? Because this CD has 2 amazing songs (Mancini's "Lujon" and "Peaches" by the Stranglers), and 11 terrible ones. In a twist surprising NO ONE, the 11 terrible songs are also the ones written by UNKLE (sans DJ Shadow) and South, which is the reason I originally bought this nonsense in the first place. I should have spent my money on DJ Dexta records, YKNOWWHATI'MSAYIN! Anyways, this movie is good. Sir Ben Kinglsey slays and the scenes with the 2 good songs are good. Woof, James Lavelle. Woof as well as oof.

AMON TOBIN - BRICOLAGE

Man, Amon Tobin. Way to use a high-minded French-origin word as an album title. Why don't you call your album Fromage or Patisserie while you're at it? Isn't Amon Tobin Brazilian? I was really into him for a while. Anytime you get one of these post-D&B guys like Amon Tobin or Squarepusher, they are really unrewarding bc the good songs to shitty songs ratio is so poor. I had to listen to 10 songs of fretless bass guitar squooglings before I got to "Port Rhombus." I had to listen to 20 terrible go-nowhere "atmospheric" fake D&B songs before I got to something like "Nightlife". Is there even one good song on this CD? Maybe? All I know for a fact is that if you have this on vinyl it probably goes for decent money on eBay. Ninja Tune lovers are nothing if not completists.

MORRISSEY - LIVE AT EARLS COURT

My first Moz concert was for his "You Are The Quarry" tour and it was amazing, you guys. The first song he played was "First of the Gang to Die," which means that the first time I saw Morrissey, the first thing he said was "you have never been in love" and I was like "you're kind of right!" This was the tour in which he just recently lifted the embargo on Smiths songs (as opposed to the tour he did after which was like a greatest hits tour). One thing I figured out from owning this particular CD is that the live version of "There Is A Light" is the same BPM as "Losing My Religion," so I used to play those 2 back-to-back, until the bartender was like "why the hell would you play the slower, shittier, older version of There Is A Light?" to which I had no reply but to immediately stop doing it. These days I'll go from the LP version to "Common People."

HELIUM - THE DIRT OF LUCK

The artiest, punkiest Asian I knew in high school LOVED THE SHIT out of Helium. He was also in an alt-rock band named after a wrestler and today is a designer who is still super arty. The lesson? Arty people remain arty, and are into arty things. When I tried to follow in his footsteps and bought this CD, I only knew "Pat's Trick" and "Medusa," which are still the only 2 songs I know. If it's 1995 and you're into Stone Temple Pilots, records like this are incomprehensible walls of confusing sound. Is Helium good? "I don't even know anymore." -The Simpsons

I have so many useless CDs -- almost as many as I have useless hip-hop records (I have many useless hip-hop records).

TAKUYA SUGIMOTO - MICHI

What the hell is this crap. This looks like the logical extension of Ninja Tune/Mo Wax fetishizing, compounded by a side fetish of Japanese import CDs. Oh DJ Krush, you have so much to answer for. The sticker on the CD sleeve literally says "Phat Electro & Breaks," which is a ridiculous combination of words. I have no idea what this sounds like, I probably listened to it once and put it on MiniDisc in college. I'm sure there's one really nice, jazzy, probably piano-having track over sparse drum programming on this CD that I could locate if you gave me 5 minutes. But is it worth it? I have often asked myself what becomes of short girls. Now I must also ask, what becomes of the dime-a-dozen goatee'd Japanese trip-hop producers?

UPDATE! I totally found that one song! I'm sure this CD cost me like $30, so this is a $30 song, because the rest of the album is terrible: Nagi - "星月夜 Hoshizukiyo"

LIZZY MERCIER DESCLOUX - PRESS COLOR

What's up, pretentious NY no wave art scene of the late 70s/early 80s! Man you may be important but you sure are unlistenable. I wonder if people tolerated Lizzy Mercier Descloux (that name! "Oh hello, I am Lizzy Mercier Descloux. I will not respond to Lizzy.") because she was a hot French chick. They just tolerated her "artistic tendencies" bc they assumed they would bone her after producing her cover of the Mission Impossible theme. Or, knowing the times, she was probably a 5'1" French Canadian with hairy armpits and wore ye olde dresses to express how arty she was.

Also, she recorded this:

Which is totally this:

PEACHES & GONZALEZ - RED LEATHER EP

This EP is fantastic. The lead track is all glitzy sleazy electro house glamor, and the rest of the EP, while at times very juvenile, also has a joyful spark of discovery all over it. It's brash and snotty and punky in all the best ways, following the footsteps of other great Jew punk Joey Ramone in spirit and religion, if not pomped out hair.

Iggy & The Stooges remain untouchable in the punk canon for obvious reasons. Watching YT footage of Iggy shirtlessly writhing around in glass/spitting at 1970s clueless jock guys is so iconic it borders on self-parody. Did you know this is Q Magazine's Loudest Album Ever? I put "Down on the Corner" on Metal On Metal years ago, and now just found out apparently there's a single version with an organ over it??? Crazy??? Thank you, Wikipedia?

Has everyone seen the new highly stylized slice of Kanye West's id? It is pretty and ridiculous:

If you don't have 34 minutes to watch, here's a summary:

1. Shot of Kanye running.

Title card: RUNAWAY. Get it, audience?

2. Kanye is driving, and a comet falls out of the sky in front of his expensive European car.

The comet is in fact a black woman who wears feathers.

Kanye carries her away from an explosion in slow-motion, in a manner not dissimilar to Serge's Melody Nelson narrative and the Propellerheads album cover:

Actually, this raises my side-point. A lot has been said of Kanye's relevance more as a celebrity/personality than as a rapper, and I think on projects like this that bears a lot of merit. Kanye is an original American asshole, at this point so rich and artistically free to do literallywhateverhe wants that he can write a song that publicly apologizes for publicly being an asshole, and perform it at the awards show on which he originally was that asshole -- that song itself also celebrating assholes!

ANYWAYS it called to mind Serge Gainsbourg and I wondered whether or not Kanye was following in his footsteps? I mean, aside from the obvious visual similarity of the way Melody Nelson and Runaway begin, both are half hour concept pieces detailing forbidden love. True, Melody Nelson is visually garbage and as far as I know a lot less obsessed with public persona, but that's not to say Serge himself wasn't obsessed with the public perception of him as an asshole. Kanye and Serge's paths seem similar, but I guess the main differences is that Kanye also produces his music, and is uniquely/irreducibly American in the same way that Serge is uniquely/irreducibly French.

3. Kanye takes Alien Bird Lady (ABL) back to his apartment in Prague and she watches the news, who says that her arrival was a comet:

Kanye turns it off and says "don't trust what the media says about me stuff."

4. Kanye plays the beat to "Power" on an MPC and she falls in love with him.

5. Kanye takes ABL to a parade of British redcoats hauling a giant Michael Jackson float.

She falls in love with these 2 things, which apparently sum up the full range of human experience/progress.

6. Kanye takes it upon Himself to tame the savage beast.

Removing all the trappings of her animal nature, he civilizes her to the ways of high society:

9. After some intense soul-searching and the following verbatim transcription, Kanye and ABL consummate their relationship.

ABL: If I don't burn, I will turn to stone.Kanye: What do you mean burn?ABL: If I don't burn, I can't go back to my world.Kanye: I don't want you to go back to your world. I want you to stay here with me.ABL: I have to burn.Kanye: No. I'll never let you burn.

SPOILER ALERT THEY KISS!!!!!!!

10. Following an extremely subtle and elegant visual metaphor, Kanye awakens to find himself alone.

11. Kanye, upon waking up/finding himself alone, runs away (get it, audience?) and sees that ABL has flown away I GUESS THEY WERE NOT SO DIFFERENT AFTER ALL, HE AND SHE, AND ALSO, THE BEGINNING WAS THE END THE WHOLE TIME

Ah yes, here we go. So many CDs taking up room in my apartment. Records too. What I'm saying is, I need to get rid of more shit. I am forever getting rid of more shit.

THE STROKES "FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF EARTH"

Ah! The first visible cracks in the thentofore impermeable Strokes facade came when their extremely bad Stone Temple Pilots cover "Juicebox" failed to electrify listeners (me). The whiny "I'm so tired, can I come to your apartment and complain about the party" lyrics had been replaced by Julian Casarica's unfiltered "WHY DONCHOO COME OVAH HEEEEEAHH!"

And the video! Yikes! Not that the videos for "Someday" and "Reptilia" were legendary but at least they rang some kind of true. The unapologetic over-stylization of the whole thing (old woman bestiality! lesbians! gay downtown bathroom make-outs! cutting edge motorola razr phone!) combined with a totally unnecessary David Cross make for a thoroughly "huh?" experience:

Right? Where's the simple-structured youth-is-fleeting and aren't-we-wistful quality of earlier Strokes efforts? This makes me think the Vampire Weekend 3rd album will also inevitably stink.

BEST SONG: You Only Live Once -- because this was written during Room On Fire-era!

THOMPSON TWINS - QUICK STEP AND SIDE KICK

"Hold Me Now" is forever the burden of the Thompson Twins, but it's not like "If You Leave" made any of OMD's earlier songs any less good. And besides, those are both great songs! The Thompson Twins were so weird. Nevermind that they were basically Color Me Badd but dressed in drag, their songs were poppy, catchy, peculiar and circus-y, dubby, weird and singular. They worked with Grace Jones, so you know they were awesome. Not only does this album feature greatest song ever "Lies", but it also has a song immortalized by John Hughes in a perfect sound/vision synergistic moment:

I got this CD for free. I only know one song on it. Ghostly is a good label though. I mean, Michna's on it! If you like forward-thinking downtempo/electronica/techno you can stream it here, but I got this comp basically for the Outputmessage track.

THE STONE ROSES - S/T

NOPE! File under "too white." Haha. Oh man. I remember when I went to the Morrissey night at Sway (do they still do that?) and Paul Sevigneeeee played "I Wanna Be Adored" and "Hallelujah" by the Happy Mondays. I asked him what the latter was and he gave me one of those "uh... the Happy Mondays [you idiotic idiot]?" and I was too ashamed to ask him what the former was.

Well, good thing anglophile Kevin was there, who informed me it was the Stone Roses. I eventually bought this album somewhere, presumably convinced of its importance bc of the deluxo CD treatment, and proceeded to listen to it never. I also bought the 33 1/3 book about this? For some reason? Ugh. So many wasted 2003 dollars. Oh well, when I'm not listening to the 19 minute version of "Fool's Gold" (always) I'm thinking about how great "I Wanna Be Adored" is.

Iggy & The Stooges - S/T

This album is amazing! I think! I've never actually listened to it all the way through. The point in my life in which I should have been, I was listening to In Utero over and over and trying to learn how to play "Aero Zeppelin" on guitar. Sure I know all the big songs.

Duh! Sure I do!

I never have any inkling or desire to listen to important late 70s seminal punk albums UNLESS I'm reading Please Kill Me, in which case I want to listen ONLY to it.